Sunday, August 31, 2014

2014 - THE EXPENDABLES 3, probably the last film in the series.

Apparently a DVD quality copy of this film leaked out to the Internet allowing for lots of illegal downloads. The studio is blaming this for the poor box office performance of this film. But the fact is, this movie sucks.

Let's get the plot out of the way. After a botched mission, Stallone thinks that his team of oldsters is getting long in the tooth. He unceremoniously dumps them and recruits some young pups who know all about the Internet and that digital stuff. Sent on a mission by CIA guy Harrison Ford who is filling in for Bruce Willis after a salary dispute the new team goes after evil Mel Gibson (who can only get roles in movies if he plays bad guys). The new team is captured by Mel so it's up to the old timers to come out of mothballs and save the day. This is essentially the plot of the ABC TV movie The Over the Hill Gang from 1969. Which compared to this was a lot shorter and lot more entertaining.

The very scary looking cast of The Expendables 3

There was much criticism of the PG-13 rating which allowed Stallone and his team to shoot and kill hundreds of guys as long as they didn't show any blood. I would have to say that I would agree with this. There is something almost offensively pornographic showing violence without ever showing one drop of blood being spilled.

Since the box office returns were so poor, this film is considered to be a bomb which will probably be the end of this franchise. Frankly this film series was never very good to begin with. The first film had the novelty of seeing all of these past their prime 80's action stars go through the fighting motions one more time. But now by the 3rd film even that novelty has worn off.